Senior/Staff Software Engineer – Localization (Visual Odometry)

Who We Are

Gatik, the leader in autonomous middle-mile logistics, is revolutionizing the B2B supply chain with its autonomous transportation-as-a-service (ATaaS) solution and prioritizing safe, consistent deliveries while streamlining freight movement by reducing congestion. The company focuses on short-haul, B2B logistics for Fortune 500 retailers and in 2021 launched the world’s first fully driverless commercial transportation service with Walmart. Gatik's Class 3-7 autonomous trucks are commercially deployed across major markets, including Texas, Arkansas, and Ontario, Canada, driving innovation in freight transportation.

The company's proprietary Level 4 autonomous technology, Gatik Carrier™, is custom-built to transport freight safely and efficiently between pick-up and drop-off locations on the middle mile. With robust capabilities in both highway and urban environments, Gatik Carrier™ serves as an all-encompassing solution that integrates advanced software and hardware powering the fleet, facilitating effortless integration into customers' logistics operations.

About The Role

We are looking for a Senior or Staff Software Engineer with a strong background in Visual Odometry (VO) and Localization to join our autonomy team. This role is critical to building precise, real-time vehicle localization systems using camera-based perception for autonomous driving applications. The ideal candidate has hands-on experience deploying VO systems in real-world environments, particularly in the autonomous vehicle (AV) domain, and brings solid C++ engineering skills to architect robust, high-performance software solutions.

This role is onsite 5 days per week at our Santa Clara, CA office.

What You'Ll Do

Design and develop real-time Visual Odometry pipelines using monocular, stereo, or RGB-D camera inputs. Implement robust camera-based localization algorithms, including visual-inertial odometry (VIO), feature tracking, motion estimation, and scale recovery. Integrate VO systems with IMU, GPS, and other sensor data to enhance pose estimation accuracy and stability.

Collaborate with the mapping, perception, and control teams to integrate localization with the AV software stack. Develop and optimize production-quality code in modern C++ for real-time performance on embedded compute platforms. Analyze system performance in diverse environmental conditions and drive improvements for reliability, accuracy, and robustness.

Participate in code reviews, mentor team members, and contribute to architectural decisions.

What We'Re Looking For

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field. 5+ years of experience in robotics, computer vision, or autonomy; 3+ years specifically in Visual Odometry or VIO. , development, testing, or deployment of AV systems).

Expert proficiency in C++ (C++14/17/20) and modern software engineering best practices. Solid understanding of epipolar geometry, camera calibration, bundle adjustment, and optimization techniques. Hands-on experience with open-source VO/SLAM libraries such as ORB-SLAM, VINS-Fusion, OpenVINS, or similar.

Experience working with ROS/ROS2, Linux development environments, and version control systems.

Qualifications

Experience integrating visual odometry with Lidar, GPS, or map-based localization. Knowledge of GPU acceleration techniques (CUDA/OpenCV/OpenGL) for computer vision pipelines. Familiarity with real-world deployment constraints such as environmental variability, sensor degradation, and compute limitations.

Experience in sensor calibration, time synchronization, and data preprocessing pipelines. Contributions to relevant open-source projects or publications in VO, VIO, or SLAM.